Cyber security strategy and transformation for critical GCC infrastructure

Starting point

Our client operates critical national infrastructure and is subject to overlapping national regulation (NCA ECC, OTCC, sector-specific authorities) and international frameworks (ISO/IEC 27001, IEC 62443, NIST CSF). A baseline assessment showed material gaps against several mandatory controls — with regulator scrutiny already scheduled.

First 90 days: stop the bleeding

We put a small senior team on site, prioritised the highest-severity findings against regulator expectations and operational risk, and executed the remediation ourselves alongside the client team — hardened identity, closed high-risk exposure paths, tightened privileged access on OT jump hosts, and produced defensible evidence for each closed finding. Within three months the posture had shifted from at-risk to defensible.

“Ninety days to become defensible. Eighteen months to become mature. And an operating model that stays that way.”

The strategy

Building on that credibility, we defined the target cyber security strategy across people (org design, roles, training), processes (governance, risk, incident, third-party, change) and technology (identity, network, endpoint, OT visibility, detection and response). The strategy was written against both national obligations and international benchmarks so a single implementation satisfied both.

Implementation and re-assessment

We built the multi-year roadmap, staffed the programme, oversaw completion and quality of every workstream, and ran the final independent re-assessment. The client crossed the target maturity level ahead of the regulator's window and moved from reactive posture to a repeatable operating cycle.